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After five years of designing custom ceramics, housewares and
promotional products for various companies, Daleet Zighelboim found
all fingers pointing toward disillusionment. This quandary prompted
her to enroll in a University of California, Los Angeles, night
class for entrepreneurs in which she stopped and assessed what she
really loved to do. She found her answer in a therapeutic
pastime-gardening-and, through additional research, found that the
hobby was swiftly becoming an appealing activity among many a young
urbanite.

OneThingLeadsTo
Another: Being a city dweller herself, Zighelboim's
plan was to redefine the traditional garden. Intent on creating a
line of affordable gardening products geared toward city
gardens-that is, the windowsills and soilbeds that line apartment
complexes and the desktops of cubicle denizens-Zighelboim began
City Yard, a Los Angeles company that sells gardening items,
including a line of flower pots, a grass-growing tin called Canned
Land and her currently ubiquitous flower petal pushpins.

"I wanted to change the stereotype that gardening was for
grandmas," says Zighelboim, 28. "There's something
hip about gardening, and I thought maybe I could access this
untapped market of 18-to-35-year-old urban dwellers who don't
even realize that it's a really cool pastime."

TricksOfTheTrade: Handling everything from packaging and
shipping the first orders to designing her Web site (www.cityyard.com), catalog and
labels, Zighelboim, along with some generous contacts, was able to
get City Yard up and running by May 1999 with $20,000 in personal
resources.

After researching suppliers to manufacture the designs,
Zighelboim took her definitive next step in July 1999 and signed up
for the Los Angeles Convention Center trade show, where she
received loads of orders and press. Realizing she had a legitimate
concept, Zighelboim patented her products, expanded her line and
focused on moving from home office to warehouse facility.

SeeingGreen: Now in a Culver City,
California, facility with a full complement of eight employees,
City Yard has finished its second round of gift shows, adding such
accounts as Nordstrom and Urban Outfitters. Although she's
afforded yard-void folks the ability to care for their own symbolic
patch of agricultural bliss, Zighelboim's own garden, unlike
her business, has sadly gone to pot. And with this year's sales
projected at well over $350,000 and plans to create a line of hip
and affordable outdoor furniture and funky gardening wearables,
it's no wonder she hasn't got time for weeding.